Sonos continues to develop parts for two new smart speakers due out in March.
Insiders received the characteristics of two new columns and shared information. The Era 300 is expected to focus on spatial audio. The speaker will cost $450, which is much cheaper than the flagship model from Sonos Five.
At the same time, the Sonos One series will most likely be completely replaced by the Era 100 model. The price of the new speaker will be $ 250, for which users will receive a couple of interesting upgrades compared to the cheaper Sonos One variant.
The Era 300 should include Bluetooth audio playback and USB-C line-in. In addition, the Era 100 will also offer both of these amenities. By the way, this makes the device more versatile than, for example, Sonos One.
Plus, in Era 100, the user will be given the opportunity to run through external sources directly, such as a player, for example.
Both Era speakers will include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, and AirPlay 2 support. Sonos will sell the USB-C audio line-in adapter and LAN combo adapter separately. Also, these speakers will be available in black or white.
The size of the Era 300 speaker is between the current Sonos One and Sonos Five. It includes six drivers that send sound forward, left, right and up. In addition, when used with Arc or Beam (Gen 2) as surround back, the Era 300 stereo pair will deliver immersive Atmos surround sound, including up-firing sound.
The user can stream spatial audio tracks from Amazon Music Unlimited (this functionality remains exclusive to HomePod at this time).
However, the Era 100 is not designed for surround sound and will not include upward facing drivers. This device is simply an improved version of the Sonos One with better performance.
Both speakers will include a new speech button among the standard Sonos controls. It will allow the user to temporarily disable the built-in microphones. There is also a physical switch on the back of each speaker that completely turns off power to the microphones. Voice assistant options should include Sonos Voice Control and Amazon Alexa.
Recall that the company has a disagreement with Apple , which positions itself as a leader in the field of spatial sound. Most likely, songs from Apple Music in Dolby Atmos format are unlikely to be supported by the speakers. Plus, Sonos speakers may not support Google Assistant either due to the company’s ongoing legal battle with Google.
Source: theverge
